The Automobile and Touring Club of the UAE (ATCUAE) has awarded a contract to Irish technology firm ActionPoint, to deploy a Motorsport Event E-Permit Portal for the club’s extensive range of motorsports events.

ATCUAE is one of the oldest national organisations in the United Arab Emirates, and was founded in 1965 as the sole representative of the Federation Automobile International (FIA) in the UAE. It governs approximately 140 competitive motorsports events, including the Abu Dhabi Formula 1 GP, Cross Country World Cup and World Rally X events.

The agreement between ATCUAE president Dr Mohammed Ben Sulayem and ActionPoint co-founder John Savage, will see the firm develop a new E-Permit system that will provide event organisers with complete visibility of the approval process significantly reducing the time and costs around managing permit approvals, to go live later in the year. It replaces a slow application process that has been manual and labour intensive, with multiple event types and data point requirements, across location, insurance, course maps and user details.

The new portal will provide motorsport event organisers with an online self-service tool to initiate and complete their event-permit application process. It will also facilitate secure online payments with full PCI-DSS compliance.

Dr Ben Sulayem, a fourteen times Middle East Rally Champion, confirmed that once the system is working in the UAE, there are further plans to roll out the system across the Middle East and North Africa region, within the next 12 months.

“The decision to select ActionPoint,” said Dr Mohammed Ben Sulayem, “was influenced by their successful delivery of the award-winning online passport renewal system, on behalf of Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland’s growing international reputation as the Silicon Valley of Europe and ActionPoint’s strong track record in the sports industry.”

“ActionPoint is delighted to have been chosen for this project,” said Savage, “which will enable ATCUAE to completely transform their permit application process, using the power of Microsoft Azure combined without our vast experience at building custom software and enabling Digital Transformation. With over 140 events running each year in the UAE, the new system will make a significant impact on their organisational resourcing and overall efficiencies.”

“We work with a number of sports data and sports technology clients, and so the inclusion of motor sports to the mix is very exciting. This project will have a focus on usability, security and of course accessibility across multiple languages, ” said Savage.